The Last of Florence

We woke up the next day refreshed and excited for another day in Italy.  Our first appointment of the day was the Uffizi at 8:15, so we ate a quick breakfast and started towards the magical courtyard we had spent the last two evenings being serenaded by the Florentine street performers.  It was an interesting walk; seeing people going about their everyday lives, kids waiting for buses.  Sunrise over the Arno was beautiful; it was just a wonderful day for wandering.

We arrived in the courtyard with our trusty Rick Steves audio tour at the ready and spent the next three hours immersed in some of the finest artwork mankind has ever produced.  I am at a loss for how to summarize the experience.  The museum started with some excellent examples of medieval sacred art and showed the progression art made from 2D to 3D, from symbolic to realistic.  In a corner were some small prints of Hercules, the first believed to have been informed by dissections.  Soon, we found ourselves in the swirl of the Renaissance, with large wall space dedicated to Botticelli, his Rite of Spring marking one of the earlier secular works of art to enter mainstream discussion.

Every piece on the wall comes from a Who's Who list of painters you vaguely recall from school.  Several important themes are shown displayed by artists throughout time, the Annunciation (Gabriel announcing to Mary that she was about to have a baby by the Holy Spirit), the Adoration of the Magi, Madonna and Childs (I thought a long time about how to go about pluralizing that), and passion scenes abound.  In the Baroque area, we noticed quite a few escapes to Egypt.  Da Vinci, Michelangelo (using some of the brightest colors of his era, I noticed), Raphael, Carvaggio, all proudly displayed in a dazzling whirlwind tour.  Hallways lined with sculptures dating back to Constantine; rooms with wallpaper every bit as much a masterpiece as the framed paintings inside; summaries best left to sentence fragments rather than complete thought.

The memories flood back in droves.  We completed Rick Steve's tour, then wheeled back around for some of the stuff Alex had a hard time finding the first time.  At last, we departed and headed to our next destination, another museum.

The Galileo Museum is not one of the more advertised sites in Florence.  The churches and galleries, rightfully so, hold top billing in Florence, but there's only so much art you can look at, and the Uffizi was a ton of art.  The Galileo serves as a great palate cleanser, with an extensive collection of scientific instruments and displays.  Located a sort block away from the Uffizi, it was a great final tourist site for Florence.

Scientists of the Renaissance were, well, Renaissance men, and they had to be.  If you had an idea for an experiment, you couldn't just go and buy materials, you had to make it yourself, so a scientist was also an expert in forging metal, woodworking, and glassblowing.  They were proud craftsmen who made beautiful instruments, and four hundred years later industrial age man can look back and ponder what they accomplished without computers or automation.  Globes, astrolabes (a type of "clock", more or less, that tracks the motions of the celestial bodies), and telescopes abounded.  Early engines and electricity experiments abounded.  There was even several terracotta models of the development of a child inside the mother's womb.

Arthur's favorite displays had to do with clocks.  He had recently become fascinated with how pendulums, weights moving towards gravity, and tension springs could be so finely controlled as to accurately tell time, in some cases without loosing a second over a hundred days, and this is all, again, being achieved without electricity or automation of any type.  The museum had some wonderful displays describing different clock movements and types.

At last, is was time to move on.  We crossed the Arno for the last time and found a lovely little cafe for some authentic Italian, and when I mean authentic, I mean the waiters didn't even speak English; this was not a tourist spot but where the locals were gathering for lunch.  We enjoyed the pasta (selected by pointing a lot) and Arthur had, for the first time in his life, rabbit.  Rabbit is delicious but very bony; like every other meat you're trying to describe, chicken is a pretty good default answer, but it had more of a gamey quality to it.  Served in an olive and tomato sauce, it was a memorable and delicious final memory of Florence.

And so, somewhat sadly, we headed back to the train station from this lovely little town whose sights, sounds, and tastes we all too briefly explored.  But fear not, dear reader, our travels lead us next to Cinque Terre, where neither visual, audio, or gastronomical senses will be found wanting.  Omnia Vincit Amour.